


Hell… Hell… Hell.  Heaven!  Heaven!  Heaven!

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: You're Part of the Life I've Never Had [4]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon-Atypical Hand Job, Canon-Typical Violence, Dirty Talk, Dubious Consent, M/M, S&M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 13:48:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17305736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: It's all in how one views it.





	Hell… Hell… Hell.  Heaven!  Heaven!  Heaven!

**Author's Note:**

> While the situation is not quite what it seems, I still tagged this as dubious consent, because Alfred would probably not willingly invite Jeremiah into his sitting room for hand jobs and BDSM reminiscences. No accounting for taste. Please use your discretion, Dear Readers.  
> This story is, frankly, a wild digression based on up-coming events in season five. I know that it won't end this way. I'd just prefer it if it did.  
> The title of this story comes from the Cabaret Voltaire song, Heaven and Hell.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. This story and the work it's based upon are fiction. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

It’s late, so Alfred could be forgiven for not realizing at first what he’s seeing; thinking it’s just shadow cutting light into strange shapes.  
The figure steps forward.  
Alfred almost smiles. When you beat a man, you start to develop a familiar feeling toward him. Especially if he survives. Especially if he survives.  
That clown’s in your parlour.  
Alfred shows his teeth, but it’s not to smile. “He’s not home.” More teeth. “On your bike, then.”  
Jeremiah’s brought a friend, a girly in a fun frock with paint on her face. She’s holding a gun on Alfred, and as absurd as she might be, her hand looks steady, her expression is empty.  
“Perhaps, I’ll show you out,” Alfred says, and takes a step forward. To his credit, he doesn’t jump back from the shot fired at his feet. He looks at the girlfriend. She has a disappointed little smile on her face, as if to say, “… That’s life!”  
Alfred sighs. “What’s it to be, then? Torture me until Bruce comes home- only, he could be gone for days, if not weeks, and I don’t think I’m your idea of pleasant company. Maybe you’ll just shoot me, and prop me up like Norman Bates’ mum.”  
“I was thinking,” Jeremiah begins, starting to circle Alfred. It’s less unnerving than it is annoying. Rude to avoid someone’s gaze when speaking to him. “I was thinking that maybe I’ve gone about things with Bruce in the wrong way. I don’t want him to feel like he can’t have anything of his own. One of the things we have in common is our independence. Who wants to be someone’s entire world? I can’t imagine anything more boring than someone with no desires or interests or identity of their own, totally dependent on you.” He casts a look at the girlfriend, and Alfred looks, too. She’s as blank as she was before. “So, I’m willing to acknowledge that Bruce has a past, has his own life. But, call me selfish, I still want everything that belongs to him.”  
Alfred laughs. “Your brother had the same idea. Says more about the pair of you than it does about Bruce or me.” Alfred shrugs. “Go on, then. Do what you came here to do.” Jeremiah stays where he is, the smile frozen on his face. For a second, he looks dead. He looks like he was never alive. A wax figure, Alfred could give him a push and knock him over. Alfred continues, “Or maybe this would go in a way that’s more to your liking without your girlfriend watching. Maybe you don’t want her to see what kind of man she’s with.”  
“Oh, she knows what I am,” Jeremiah says.  
“Good. Honesty’s the foundation of every lasting relationship. Go on. Tell the bit of fluff to get lost.”  
Jeremiah smiles slightly. It’s of a different quality than his expression at rest. “You think I’m stupid, like Jerome.”  
“Had crossed my mind. Yeah.”  
“She’s going to stay. And I think you’re going to appreciate it more with an audience.”  
“Projecting a bit, are we?”  
“I think you want people to know what you are. Look at you. Alfred. You’re overcompensating a little, aren’t you?”  
“I’ll give you that it’s not as subtle as red lipstick, but we all have our little ways.”  
Then, Jeremiah kisses him, and Alfred has to admit. It was unexpected. It was certainly unexpected. Jeremiah’s close, right up against him, so he’d be easy to subdue, but the girl’s lurking in the background, never in the same place for long. Even if Alfred did in her boyfriend, she might still shoot Alfred. Not out of loyalty, he thinks. Or even out of spite. Probably just because.  
He lets Jeremiah kiss him for real, long and deep and wet. Soft and probing and warm. Alfred might as well let himself enjoy it. It’s not as though he has anything else to do at the moment. The boy- not really a boy, is he?- is tall and slim, with that look of early privation that one never grows out of. Alfred’s seen plenty of young men like that, battered by hunger and loss before they were old enough to join up. The walking dead by their twenty-first, if they made it that long. The way Jeremiah is, it’s easy to imagine that he’s younger. It’s easy to imagine that he’s just stretched thin, in a phase, that he has somewhere to go. If his kiss is hungry, it’s because he is. At that age, you burn up everything around you. You have to. It’s how you grow up.  
When he pulls back, Alfred sees the lines around Jeremiah’s eyes, shallow but obvious with his pallor.  
“You’re not so young, are you?” Alfred says, rubbing his thumb along the lines next to Jeremiah’s mouth. “It’s beginning to wear on you. You don’t know it yet, but it’s coming.”  
“What’s that?” Jeremiah says.  
He suddenly feels very tenderly toward this boy, this young man, this person, this killer. “Being alone. It’s not good to be so alone.”  
“Oh, but I’m not. I have Bruce. I have, you know,” he waves toward the girl.  
“It’s not nice to speak that way about a young lady. They don’t appreciate being taken for granted.”  
“She loves it. If it weren’t for me, she’d be picking up nickles from the floor at some dyke peep show on the Sirens' side of town.”  
Alfred turns his head toward her. “Is that true, darling?”  
She shrugs. Her voice is deeper than he expected it to be, flat and emotionless. “Everybody’s somebody’s slave.”  
“Very true,” Jeremiah says softly. “She has her moments. That brings me back to my original thought: just what is it that you do for him?”  
“I love him,” Alfred says, because it’s the truth, and there’s no shame in the truth, and the truth is never more useful than when it could mean more than one thing. “I love him more than my life. You know that, or you wouldn’t be here.”  
“Also true. But I didn’t ask you how you felt. I asked you what you do for him.”  
“I keep his house. I see to his needs.” This last touch pleases him, because it could mean anything. It only means one thing. But it could mean absolutely anything.  
Jeremiah sighs in an irritated breath. “That’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it? When did you first have him?”  
“I don’t know what you mean.”  
“When was he first in your bed?”  
“He’s never been in my bed.”  
“When did you fuck him for the first time?”  
“I would never do that.”  
Jeremiah smiles. His arms are crossed behind Alfred’s neck. His bones feel close to the skin. He smells too much of cologne. Fleetingly, Alfred wonders what it’s meant to cover up, but none of the possibilities are as interesting as the question they’re meant to answer. “I think you would. I think… you want him desperately.”  
“Oh, yes? Tell me what you think I want.”  
“I think… you want to taste him. You want to kiss him. You want to kiss him everywhere. You want to feel him against you. What do you think it’s like?”  
“Haven’t the slightest.”  
“I’ll tell you, then.” Jeremiah looks into his eyes. Alfred has the sense not to look away. He can’t move. He can’t do anything. He is, he was shocked to realize, not really interested in dying. It diminishes him, but he’s not ready to go like this, in a futile gesture to defend Bruce’s honor. To spite everything. He still wants to live. He doesn’t move. “The first time was… violent.”  
“Oh, yes?” Alfred says, because there’s nothing else that he can safely say. Who hasn’t heard it all before? Last night, I had your sister. Night before that, your mum. Night before that, your dad. Only a child or a fool cares about things like that. “Please,” Alfred says conversationally, “tell me more.”  
“What’s that old song… he hit me, and it felt like a kiss?”  
“Oh, he hit you?”  
“A few times. I bled. After that, he couldn’t get enough. He had me in an alley. My lips split open, bled on his cock.”  
“That’s terribly interesting.”  
“I knew you’d think so. You’d like me to show you, wouldn’t you?”  
“Not especially, but you must do whatever makes you happy.”  
Jeremiah smiles. “Hit me.”  
Alfred laughs.  
The smile vanishes. “Hit me.”  
“Surely, your lady friend will perforate me if I lay a finger on you.”  
“Not at all. Hit me. Please.”  
It’s just like riding a bike, isn’t it? No. It’s better than that. It’s slipping into your own bed after months and years spent away. It’s the golden early morning sun caressing you in your bed, like it knows you, like it loves you. His fist knows Jeremiah’s face. The bones and muscle and skin know each other. They welcome each other. It’s everything that the kiss should have been. Afterwards, Alfred sighs. He helps Jeremiah up. The feeling within is crushing. It will, he’s sure, be difficult to speak.  
“Like that, was it?” His voice sounds too thin to him. Barely like a voice, at all. Air caught in a tunnel. A dumb, featureless whisper.  
“Yes, it was. Did you teach him how to throw a punch?”  
“Yeah.”  
“I thought so. Did you teach him how to fuck?”  
It’s calculated to offend, so it does. Jeremiah’s expecting another slap, so Alfred grabs him by the shoulders, gives him a shake, and kisses him. The blood flows freely from his mouth. Alfred takes it in. He pushes his tongue into Jeremiah’s mouth, dilutes the blood with spit. Water and wine, both. Very pretty. He holds Jeremiah against him, doesn’t let him pull away. He’s not trying to.  
He kisses Jeremiah’s throat, drags a bloody, slick trail down to his collar. Bites him and sucks at the skin, above an old scar, a ragged white oval. He pushes Jeremiah away. It’s satisfying to watch him stumble.  
“Was it like that?”  
“It’s like you know him,” Jeremiah says, taking off his tie, his jacket. He drops them on the floor. The mark of somebody used to living alone, not being cared for. “When did you realize that you were in love with him?”  
“It’s not that kind of love, you stupid boy.” Something strikes Alfred, somewhere around that old wound to his chest. Even drunk, Reggie could always hit his mark. If he hadn’t hit the heart, it was because he hadn’t wanted to. One pain is now a reflection of the other. Two signals playing tag in the night, neither one actually saying anything; bleating just to bleat.  
Jeremiah shrugs. “Tell me about it, then.”  
“His father carried him into the house. His mother was too tired. She needed the help of the chauffeur, herself. Had to have a nurse, for weeks afterward. It had been a difficult pregnancy. Martha wasn’t a young woman. Thomas was older, himself. For both of them being so mature, neither of them had the slightest idea. There we were, like three children, for our collective ignorance and fear, looking at this tiny creature that needed us, totally and completely. I had no idea how to care for him. So, I decided that what I could do was die for him. His parents would learn how to raise him, but I already knew how to die. Funny how that worked out.”  
“That’s touching.” As much as he wants to, Alfred can detect no sarcasm in Jeremiah’s voice.  
“I’m very pleased you think so.”  
“Hit me again.” His head’s held high as he says it, haughty, pleased with himself.  
Alfred kisses him. Feels the wound to Jeremiah’s lip reopen, Jeremiah’s skin sticking to his, pulling free, letting the blood flow again. He unbuttons Jeremiah’s shirt, yanks it aside, runs his hand down Jeremiah’s body. He’s strangely cool to the touch. It’s perfectly fitting, actually. It’s as though the fact of his life is a lie. If he reacts like a living man, it’s imperfectly, like something that had to teach itself to be human.  
That pain strikes Alfred again.  
“You can’t get enough, either, can you?” Jeremiah says, a tinny, wobbling edge to the voice.  
“That’s the way it is, sometimes. For people like us.”  
“People like you and Bruce?”  
“No. People like you and I.”  
If Jeremiah has anything to say about that, Alfred swallows it. He kisses him for a long time, like he’s wringing something out of Jeremiah. Like there’s some sort of end to this. Someplace for either of them to go. Neither of them is going anywhere. The tragedy, or the comedy, if you prefer, is that Jeremiah as yet hasn’t figured this out. He turns Jeremiah around, hears Jeremiah exhale and inhale again. He’s easy to hold. He’s not struggling at all. He’s yet to learn. That if you give in too easily. You’ll never get what you really want.  
Alfred runs his hand down Jeremiah’s belly. The skin feels too smooth. It’s tiresome, these strange sensations. You don’t want something cold. You don’t want something smooth, unblemished. You want--  
“Shall I tell you about the first time I experienced orgasm after being beaten?” He doesn’t let Jeremiah answer before he begins undoing Jeremiah’s trousers. He puts his hand inside. High quality knickers. Soft fabric. A patch of dampness. Absently, Alfred thinks: he’ll have to soak them as soon as he gets home, or the stain will set. For a while, he touches Jeremiah’s cock through the fabric, just enjoying the feeling. Jeremiah doesn’t move, just lets himself be operated upon.  
Alfred understands.  
He sighs. “He wasn’t the kind you’d expect it from. He had a very gentle way about him. He was a gentleman, in every sense. He spoke softly. Used far too many words to explain a simple thing. At first, he irritated me. I found him pretentious. I thought he was arrogant, fancied himself. The second I realized my annoyance, it changed into something else. I began to love the way he was, precisely because it annoyed me, because it was an irritant. It made me feel sort… restless, inside.”  
He takes out Jeremiah’s cock, pulls at him slowly, not even in a way he might especially enjoy. Too roughly to be anything but provocative. Not pleasurable. Not yet.  
“Bruce,” Jeremiah says. The smile audible in his voice.  
“If you’d like. Shall I continue?”  
“Please.” Still too far from it.  
“It began as a game I played with myself. I’d been playing it all my life. I told myself that I wanted to see what the other fellow was made of. One of two things usually happened. Either he backed down, or he quit me in disgust. I didn’t have very many mates in my youth, as you might imagine. Very occasionally, if it was a stranger, I’d get a slap, but that was as far as it ever went. Most people, even people comfortable with violence don’t have it in them to give out a proper beating, especially if they think you’re expecting it. Those who do, you end up having to fight, because they mean business. It’s not a game for them. It’s not a game at all.”  
A squeeze. A twist. Jeremiah moves against him. You’d mistake it for an objection if you didn’t know the difference. He pushes his backside against Alfred’s front. Not an objection in the least.  
“I thought that this man would back down. I expected him to. I wanted him to. We could go on that way. If he backed down, then I would, too, I’d apologize for being in a mood, and all would be forgiven. I knew it was more likely that he’d dismiss me. There was no reason for him to keep me around. I had nothing he needed. I was nothing. I was less than nothing. He was doing me a favor. And here I was, purposely trying to provoke him. Yet, I had to see it through. I had to,” he inclines his head, says it against Jeremiah’s ear. “He didn’t back down. Every time I was unpleasant to him, he responded with perfect composure, with humor. He had a great sense of humor. He was always laughing. Never at people, but at life, at the strange places we find ourselves. The strange things we do to ourselves. He laughed frequently at himself. I hated him for it, for having that capacity. You see, I take everything far too seriously. Always have. I think you do, too. I think it hurts you. I think it hurts you quite badly.”  
Jeremiah leans completely against him, moves his hips slightly, slowly, from side to side. He’s suffered enough, Alfred decides. They both have. He stokes Jeremiah’s cock slowly, but with real intention, now. He’s finished playing around.  
“Finally, this man confronted me. He asked me if he’d done something wrong. I said that he hadn’t. The question shocked me. Like that, he knew that I was telling the truth. After, I couldn’t stop. He asked me questions. It was like he already knew the answer, but just had to be sure. I hated him for that, too. He had the truth, but he was determined to be careful with it. I didn’t want him to be careful. I was ready. I was ready for whatever he wanted to do. If he’d laughed in my face and walked away, it would have been nothing less than I deserved. He didn’t, though, and then, well, I just had to tell him. I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but I told him. I told him that it was a game. I told him about getting more than I’d bargained for in pubs and alleys and carparks. I told him that my nose had been broken and reset twice before I was twenty-five. I told him that I’d joined the service because it was like one, long fight, and we all knew what we were there for. I loved the simplicity of it, I told him. For once in my life, I was normal.”  
He stops for a moment, lets Jeremiah breathe and think about himself. Moves his hand into Jeremiah’s underwear, and cups his balls. Tugs at them sufficiently firmly to make Jeremiah jolt. There. That’s good.  
“He was very serious, almost grave as he told me that he understood. He’d made a study of such cases. It was a perfectly ordinary psychological phenomenon. Within the context of a relationship of mutual respect, it was even healthy. Those were his exact words. ‘A relationship of mutual respect’. I said, what if it was slightly more to me? What if- I could barely put it into words. What if I felt things? He said that was perfectly normal, as well. It was an involuntary physical response. A misfiring of the nerves, he said. Unusual, but not necessarily pathological. He asked me if I wanted to try something.”  
He stops again. It’ll be pointless if they don’t see it through. He listens to himself breathe. He listens to Jeremiah breathe. He thinks he hears the girlfriend yawn. The clock ticks. It’s like a heartbeat.  
Oh, that’s so trite, isn’t it?  
“I said that, yes, I did want to try something. He said that I must trust him. I said that I already did. We were in a room much like this. There was nothing to bind my hands with. He apologized for that. I let him take off my shirt. I placed my hands against the wall. After a certain point, we didn’t really need to speak. I heard him take off his belt. The first time he struck me, it was across the shoulder. He kept hitting me there, or my back. He knew enough to avoid certain areas; the vertebrae, the kidneys. He was a very careful person. The pain was like the feeling of waking up. That’s the only way to describe it. When I breathed out and breathed in again, it was as though I’d never taken a breath before. I was vaguely aware of some feeling of sexual excitement, but I wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge it. It’s better when you wait until it’s unavoidable, isn’t it? Like that, it’s like you’re being made to do something.”  
He stops again. He counts out thirty breaths.  
“I never told him to stop. He decided when to stop. Like that, it was like I belonged to him. I was a thing he could use however he wanted. The pain was immense, inescapable. It seemed to fill my vision, all of me, everything. I could feel the blood running down my back. It felt like something I didn’t need anymore. It felt like poison leaking out of me. By this point, it was impossible to deny what I felt. I didn’t have to do anything. It happened without my permission. It was only afterwards that I realized that I’d gone too far. I let him turn me around. I looked down, at the front of my trousers. I needed him to know what had happened. I needed him to know what I’d done. I wanted him to be angry, or disgusted. He put his hands on me. He tilted back my head. He kissed my throat. It was like coming twice.”  
There. It’s better when you wait for it. Jeremiah moans, his body arching and jerking. He bends slightly at the waist as though he’d been hit in the belly. Supported by Alfred, he comes in Alfred’s hand. He holds Jeremiah for a while. With Alfred’s eyes closed, maybe-  
Yes. But only for a second.  
He turns Jeremiah around again, tidies him up, puts him back together. The motions are comforting. Buttoning up a young’s man shirt. Picking up the things he’s dropped. Young men can be careless. Tying his tie. Helping him on with his jacket.  
But Jeremiah doesn’t really resemble anyone. Not anyone you know.  
Not anyone.  
Not even a little bit.  
The most important thing you learn is how to lie, really lie. Now, the way to do it, he has been told, is to build up layers of truth and untruth around the thing you want to conceal. That’s too mechanical for Alfred. The thing that works far better, he’s found, is telling the truth. Most people who’re asking questions know the answer they’re looking for, or the kind of answer they’re looking for. It’s only polite to give it to them. With some parts missing. They may come back later on, looking for those parts, but by that point, they’re probably a little desperate, and they’ll accept anything you give them that seems to have the ring of truth about it.  
He brushes off Jeremiah’s shoulders. Takes out a handkerchief, and touches it to Jeremiah’s lip, but the blood’s already dry, can’t be wiped away. He folds up the handkerchief, puts it in Jeremiah’s breast pocket. “I hope you enjoyed that.”  
“Your dedication to giving good service is remarkable. I can see why he keeps you around.”  
“I’m very pleased you think so.”  
“It’s a shame that it won’t save your life, though. I’m very sorry about that, Alfred. Bruce will… get over it.”  
Alfred looks at the girlfriend, gives her the same disappointed smile she gave him earlier. He looks at Jeremiah. He laughs. “You’re a raving lunatic. You’re going to do what you want, but he’ll stop you. He’ll stop you. No. I didn’t do it for him.”  
Jeremiah smiles. There’s a sweetness about him, a cloying, tooth-rotting sweetness that entices at first, until you realize just how much of it there is, how deep it goes. He could have syrup in his veins. But you know he doesn’t. There, now. There is doubt. There is surprise. “Oh, no?”  
Alfred smiles right back at him. “I didn’t do it for you, either.”  
“Then, who-”  
If he’s so stupid that he has to ask the question, pity’s wasted on him. Alfred won’t take pity on him. Silent and serene, Alfred continues to smile.


End file.
